Gods of Time
by IDeclareATimeWar
Summary: As the daughter of Hermes, Odessa thought she had seen it all. Monsters in every shape and size, centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, giants, titans, gods, goddesses, and magical invisible mountains hovering over New York City. But when she encounters a man with a mysterious blue box and agrees to travel the stars, she may get more than she bargained for. And so may he.
1. Claws (1)

Author's Note/Disclaimer: I don't own the Doctor (unfortunately ;P ), or any of the monsters unless otherwise noted. I don't own Rick Riordan's demigod universe or the way he portrays any and all aspects of Greek Mythology. I do own Odessa, she's original, but she's created within Riordan's world, which I do not own. Obviously. This is set before ten regenerates, after Donna, and sort of AU/outside of any other storyline of his. And finally, in medias res, allons-y!

* * *

I raced around the corner. The monster had come this way, I was sure of it. The room was dark, but turning on a light could spook the beast. Instead, I raised my sword, Lykos, allowing the soft glow of the Celestial Bronze blade to illuminate the space. The dull flicker cast nightmarish shadows on the walls and ceiling. The coffee cart in the corner stretched up the wall. The lifeless florescent light fixtures danced across the unfinished ceiling like nymphs, and the plant in the cube three rows to my right grew taller and taller, and grew long, fearsome claws.

No, wait, that wasn't a plant.

A gravelly voice said, "Come on then, humaaann," and I ran.

Not away from it, mind you. This was a pursuit. I hadn't chased the ugly thing into this building just so I could run away when it decided it spoke English. I ducked left, into the nearest cube and stood on the desk, crunching some papers in the process. Hopefully, that would be all—I looked around the desk and located a stack of business cards—Kuri Hunt had to worry about Monday morning. Sorry about your papers, Kuri. Something crashed behind be and I spun, swinging my blade wildly—I mean, with utmost precision and grace.

A man in a suit was standing in the corridor, surrounded by broken glass. He examined the floor around him. "Oops."

I ducked. Was he an employee? Had he heard the ruckus and wandered in off the street? Why on earth would he do that? A high-pitched whine filled the space. "End of the line!" He called out. Had he followed me? Or was he addressing the monster? Still crouched on top of the desk, I sort of squat-waddled to the other side of the cube, where the desk met the partition, and peeked over the top. At this point, I wasn't sure whom I was hiding from. Behind me, the monster roared again. The man made a face. "Oh, you don't have to be rude." He had spiky hair and sideburns, and spoke with an English accent like the Geico gecko's.

I heard a crunch and knew what it was before I even turned around. The monster had found me, and it had just stepped on the papers I'd knocked to the floor only a moment ago. Its ugly, vomit- green face was only a yard from mine. I swung Lykos. The monster dodged, but not quickly enough. I caught its shoulder (or, shoulder-area?) and it bellowed. The beast reeked like bad breath. It stumbled backward, clutching its shoulder in its enormous claw.

All of a sudden Sideburns appeared at the end of the aisle, holding a jug. I was still in Kuri's cube, but I took several steps backward anyway and bumped up against the rear partition. The man—who was obviously insane—ran toward the still-moaning monster and uncapped the jug. When he was within range, he thrust it forward, emptying the contents onto the creature. Its skin steamed and it howled in agony. Then, it exploded.

That took a minute to process. It had really exploded! Popped like grossest water balloon of all time. Monster guts were everywhere. The cube wall had shielded me, but from what I could see, the aisle was a complete mess. I stepped out on my toes, trying to avoid the slime.

Sideburns poked his head out a few cubes down. "Brilliant!" he declared.

"Disgusting," I decided.


	2. Stories (2)

Sideburns took off down the staircase. I took off after him. He was fast, and made quick work of the winding stairwell, which wasn't easy. I guessed he probably had a lot of experience running for his life. Well, that was fine. So did I. And I was faster.

"Wait!" He didn't slow down, but I was closing the gap as it was. He exited the stairwell onto the building's third floor. I took the last four stairs in one leap and slipped through the doorway before it had a chance to shut behind him. The space looked like storage, with crates and palates everywhere. In the back corner next to a forklift was what could have been a freestanding closet or something, with words across the top that looked to me like "LIOPCE BXO." Sideburns was standing in front of it, digging something out of his pocket.

"Hey!" I called out again. He turned around, but I wasn't there anymore, I was leaning against the box. The idea was that he would jump out of his skin when he turned back around and saw me, but instead he just raised an amused eyebrow.

"Very good," he said. He sounded impressed. "How did you—?" He looked behind him again, at the spot where I'd been when I'd shouted.

I interrupted him. "What kind of monsters were those?"

His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, '_what kind_'?"

Was he serious? "There are different kinds," I said. "Furies, harpies, lares, minotaurs, although I guess there's really only one of those." His expression had changed. His eyes were wider, and now both eyebrows had climbed his forehead. "But I've never seen whatever that thing was," I finished.

"You've seen… furies?"

I rolled my eyes. He was clearly a god, but I didn't know which one. He didn't make a show of introducing himself like most of the gods I'd met. Maybe he was a minor god. Or maybe it was supposed to be obvious, and I was just missing it. Maybe he was someone really important. I sized him up. The long coat and pinstripe suit were very Hades, god of the Underworld. He was a snappy dresser. But this guy had a twinkle in his eye that was far too alive to belong to the Lord of the Dead.

Had I never met my dad, I might have guessed Hermes. The messenger god had a similar troublemaker's spark and wasn't one for grandiose introductions. He always had someplace to be, and was a natural runner. I'd gotten that from him.

I looked at the closet-thing. It was blue, and had a sign on the front with what may have been instructions, but I couldn't read them. The funny thing was, I could have sworn I could _feel_ it. Not like, roughness or temperature or anything you would learn by touching it, but it was like it was talking to me, too quietly for me to hear clearly. But it was telling stories. Stories of adventures, of people and places far away. For just a moment, I was lost in it. I couldn't understand the words, and the images were foggy, but the emotions, the wonder, the fear, the sorrow, those were crystal clear.

I blinked, and saw, once again, Sideburns standing before me. The man became more mysterious every second. Fastest way to collect information: Ask.

"Alright, who are you supposed to be?"

"I'm the Doctor."


	3. Thieves (3)

"You're the doctor," I repeated. "Right, so Apollo, then? Or, no! I know! You're Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing." Asclepius was the son of Apollo, and had a much more specific skill set. We had just learned about him last week. As a sort of experiment, I'd been paying attention. It looked to be paying off, so far.

But Sideburns was looking at me like I was speaking Ancient Greek. I didn't think I was—I mean, it happened occasionally but I was getting better about catching myself. One of the minor inconveniences that came with being a demigod—right behind having monsters trying to kill you all the time.

"Just the Doctor." He seemed to remember his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a silver key. He put it into the door of the closet-box-thing and looked like he was about to open it up, but he hadn't made up his mind. "What was your name?" he asked.

I extended a hand. "Odessa. Daughter of Hermes." The box's voice was getting louder in my head, clearer.

"Hermes." He sounded incredulous. "Hermes who?"

"Greek god. Messenger to Mount Olympus. Protector of travelers, and patron of commerce." Absentee dad, but nevermind that.

"And thieves." He finally shook my hand. "Or you're a nutter—" All of a sudden, I could hear the box clearly. It hit me like a wave, and I stumbled backward. It was a vehicle! Of course! The Tardis, it was called. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. It was introducing itself to me, I realized. It was telling me its story. And I could understand it.

An old man, a lost soul, a story as vast and intricate as the universe itself. Spinning faster and faster, across all of space. Everything that had ever existed and ever would. So many stories, all in fast-forward and slow motion at the same time. Then it stopped, waiting. Hi, I thought at it. I'm Odessa.

The Doctor looked concerned. I realized he was still grasping my hand, and had his other hand on my shoulder. I must've been about to fall. He'd caught me. "You alright?"

"Thieves, yes," I said. "Them too. Though you could talk, traveling around in a stolen box."

He took a step backwards. "How…?" He looked at the Tardis. _You've surprised him_.

I can see that, I thought back.

_Good for you._

What?

"How do you know that?" He peered at me with new interest. "Who are you?"

I decided to let him worry a little. "Years and years, traveling the stars in search of adventure. My dad would like you. We could be related, you and me."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"I'm not from around here."

It was my turn to raise an amused eyebrow. "No, you're not," I agreed. It occurred to me that I'd never met a god with an English accent. Some of the more traditional ones held on to a subtle Greek inflection, but never English.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a pen of some nature, then pointed it at me. That same whine rang in my ears and a blue light came from the end, shining straight into my eyes. "Hey, watch it!" I protested. But it only lasted a second, and then he was squinting at it. He whacked it against his palm a few times and squinted some more.

"You're really a demigod." He shook his head in wonder. "Just when you think you've seen it all. I mean, I've heard about demigods in stories and legends. Every race has its own mythologies. Because that's the thing, isn't it?"

I wanted to ask what the heck the pen thing was and what he had done to me, but he had grown so passionate, holding his hands out in front of him like he expected the answer to materialize in the air and drop into them, that I decided not to interrupt.

"No matter where you go, no one's got a complete explanation. Every intelligent race tells stories to explain their world. It's universal, that—that _need_ to understand, to explain everything. You lot, you never stop looking for answers. But it never occurred to me that they actually existed. And twenty-first century Earth! Brilliant!"

He turned away and started pacing. "Think about what it _means_, though. This changes everything! Gods, monsters, if they're all real, then—" He stopped pacing and stared at me. "What else is out there, do you think?"

I didn't have a response, I just returned his wide-eyed gaze.

"Hmm?"

I stuttered, "I—I don't know?"

"Do you want to find out?" There was a fire in his eyes. Old eyes. So old. Like my dad's. Eyes like Chiron's. Eyes that had seen old worlds burn and new worlds born. I wondered briefly what my eyes must have looked like, to him.

He tilted his head a little, and I realized he was actually waiting on an answer from me. I grinned. Well, duh.

"Yes."


	4. Turns

"Brilliant!" The Doctor held my sword in his hands, turning it over delicately. "This is beautiful. And the perception filter is excellent, really." He looked at me and explained, "What you called the 'Mist,' I call a perception filter. It—well, I guess you know what it does."

"Ok, my turn," I said, taking my sword back. It collapsed into a bobby pin and I slid it back into my hair. We'd been at this for an hour. The thing was, each of us was so bewildered by the very existence of the other, that we'd determined the fairest way to satisfy both our curiosities was to take turns asking questions. Secrets had to be respected, but arbitrarily withholding bits of information was against the rules. "What's a crumpet?"

The Doctor looked incredulous. "What's a crumpet? _That's_ your question?" The Tardis engine hummed in amusement.

I shrugged. "It's one of those things I just figured I'd ask if I ever became friends with an English person."

He blinked. "Right. You do know I'm not actually English."

I waved noncommittally. "I know, I know; you're an alien and whatnot."

"And whatnot?" he repeated in disbelief. "I'm a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation Kasterborous. I'm nine hundred an six years old!"

I straightened, putting my hands on my hips. "Oh, yeah? I'm the demigod daughter of Hermes and Elizabeth Clarke. I'm from Brooklyn, New York, USA, Earth. I'm twenty." I took a step forward and poked him in the shoulder. "You sound English."

His eyes narrowed. His nose was inches from mine. I stuck out my chin. He stuck out his chin. "I've got two hearts," he said.

"You do not."

He grabbed my hand and pressed it against his chest, first on the left side, then on the right, all the while holding my gaze.

"Ok, fine," I conceded. "You've got two hearts."

He smirked.

"So do you know what a crumpet is? Or is that too difficult a question for you, Time Lord?"

He gave an exasperated sigh. "You are impossible!"

"So are you!" I countered. "I thought we were past that!"

He threw his hands up in surrender. "It's a cake. A crumpet is a cake. Like, a biscuit. You put butter on it."

I pondered this. "So it's not a musical instrument?"

"What, like a trumpet? No."

"Huh." Unable to keep a straight face any longer, I giggled. I tried to contain it, but I wound up making that disgusting noise like blowing your nose that happens whenever you fail to hold in a laugh.

The Doctor laughed too. It was a boyish laugh, especially for someone more than nine hundred years old. "You're really nine hundred and six?" I asked.

"I believe it's my turn," he said, looking at the Tardis ceiling. But after a moment, he answered, "Yes," anyway. He looked at me. "You're from Brooklyn?"

"Is that your question?"

"No."

I answered anyway. "Yeah, I am."

"Who've you left behind? Have you got friends? Other demigods?"

I thought about that. I hadn't been at camp since the summer ended. Classes were out for Thanksgiving, though I wasn't the best about attending them anyway. "This guy and I have been sort of dating for a couple of months. His name is Nico. He'll be all right, though. He's kind of a loner anyway."

The Doctor only nodded.

"My turn." I held up the magic-wand-contraption and wiggled it in my fingers. "What's this thing?"

Alarmed, the Doctor patted down his coat pockets. "How did you—? Give that back!" He snatched at it, but I was much too quick for him. It wasn't even a contest, really.

"No no," I teased. "You zapped me with this thing. I want to know what it is."

"It's mine," he said firmly.

"What's it do?" I asked, turning it around and examining it from all angles.

"It's a sonic screwdriver. It… sonics things."

"_Sonics_ things. That's a new one." I tossed it a few times, just to watch the Doctor twitch. The second time, I failed on the catch and it clattered across the floor. He got there first. I like to think I let him.

He put it back in his coat and looked at me disdainfully. "New rule. No taking my stuff."

I grinned. "Okay."


	5. Clouds (1)

In New York City, it had been the end of November. On the southern hemisphere of the planet Munkwan, in the fifth orbit of the star Gizem, it was the beginning of the Third Year of the Second Spring, and the city of Ataro Phem was celebrating.

Below me was what amounted to a transparent catwalk, suspended so high above the planet's surface that I couldn't see the ground. The walkways extended in every direction, creating a glassy web. The life-forms were bizarre: Tall and thin, with skin that glowed in a brilliant spectrum of colors I didn't even know existed. I wondered if they were dancing or if that was just the way they moved.

"That's what 'Ataro Phem' actually means, in Old Southern Munkwan," the Doctor was saying. "The City in the Sky. The interesting bit is that it's actually only been an hour since we left New York. On earth, it's still 2018." He was looking around like a wide-eyed kid, taking it all in. "You could say we've not traveled through time at all, only through space. 'Course, once you factor in the vortex drive and estimated linear travel time between the Milky Way Galaxy and this one, everything's time travel, really. We'd be long dead before we ever arrived here." He kept going, but I'd stopped listening. It was only his accent that had held my attention past the first sentence. Between the techno-babble and the British colloquialisms, it was a wonder I could understand anything the man said. He'd said "jiggery-pokery" earlier, and I still wasn't sure whether that was some obscure saying or a part of the Tardis engine.

Off-key music was coming from an ensemble to the left. The creatures juggled their instruments uncomfortably. One nearly dropped the rather enormous contraption it was holding, and for a second it looked like it might clatter over the edge into the cloudy oblivion below. In a split second I was there, with the strange thing in my hands. I handed it back to the orangeish musician, who could only manage an addled nod in thanks. "Better be careful," I said playfully. It stared at me with big, black eyes, and I didn't know whether it was surprised or what.

I walked back over to the Doctor, who was staring at me. Ignoring his expression, I leaned toward him and muttered, "I'm no child of Apollo… but they're not very good."

He held my gaze for a second longer, and finally appraised the band. "Well, they're only children. Probably only about a week old. Maybe two, but no more."

"Two weeks old?"

"Their life spans are short, compared to humans. They only live to be about 10, in Earth years."

Most demigods didn't live as long as normal humans, either. I sighed. The Doctor had gotten a few steps ahead of me. "And Time Lords?" I asked, catching up effortlessly. "How long do Time Lords live for, in Earth years?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Nope, sorry, it's my turn."

I rolled my eyes. "Ok, shoot." I figured he was going to ask about my impressive ability to move at lightning speed.

But he said, "Your sword."

"Kakos Lykos." I'm sure I sounded disappointed.

"Right. That's its name in Greek. Do you know what it means in English?"

"Of course I do."

"Well?"

"Bad Wolf."

"Very good. Where did you get it?"

"My dad."

"The god Hermes."

"That's right."

"Where did its name come from?"

"Hang on just a minute, Astro Boy. That's three questions." I had a full arsenal of nicknames. 'Astro Boy' was my current favorite.

"You get three, next go," he offered.

"You bet I do, yeah." I looked around, taking in the scenery. After a moment, I said, "He said he named it after an old friend."

A pained look crossed his face, but he buried it. I supposed I could have used a question to find out why he was so interested, but I decided to let it go.

"Alright, here's a question," I said, and pointed through the walkway, where something enormous was passing through the clouds below. "What's that thing?"


	6. Steps (2)

**AN: **I recently rediscovered the quote from "The Satan Pit" where the Doctor says he's seen "fake gods and bad gods and would-be gods and demigods"... and because of the way I wrote the first chapter we're just gonna pretend he never said that, and that before Odessa, he never imagined that gods or demigods existed. (I'm gonna pull a Moffat and just ignore anything I don't feel like being consistent with.)

Thanks for all the favorites and follows!

* * *

The Doctor looked down at the massive… _thing_ through the floor and let out a low whistle. "I dunno," he said, "but she is a beauty. Look at those lateral stabilizers!" His eyes sparkled with the reflections in the glassy surface beneath us.

I could already see where this was going. The Doctor was a trouble magnet, just like I was. "Well, come on," I said.

He looked up, puzzled. "What?"

"Let's get a closer look!" I said, and took off.

"Odessa wait!" he yelled after me, but I heard him running, so I didn't look back. I slowed down a little though. He caught up and grabbed my arm. "What is your plan, exactly?"

I stopped. "Plan?" I asked, befuddled. "Listen, I'm not Athena's kid, okay. Planning's not exactly my thing." I eyed him. "You didn't strike me as the strategizing type," I admitted. "I took you for a more, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pinstriped-pants kind of guy."

His mouth tightened into a straight line. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I reached up and gently freed my arm from his death grip.

"You don't understand." That pained look again. "I've lost people. People I care about."

I grimaced. The flood of memories was unstoppable. I'd only been thirteen when he'd died, but I could still his laughter ringing in my ears as he chased me through the woods at camp. He'd always insist on racing me, couldn't get over the fact that I was faster than he was.

I remembered the first day I'd arrived, only seven years old. He'd knelt down, scooped me up into a big hug, and said, _Welcome to Camp Half-Blood, little sis._ I'd never had an older brother before; I didn't know what to expect. But he'd been great. He'd died a hero, and I knew that, but it didn't change the fact that he was gone. Just gone. It wasn't fair.

So I couldn't just see the pain in the Doctor's eyes as he pled with me. I could feel it. I had lived it. I choked out the words, "Yeah. Me too." The Doctor nodded slowly, decisively. With more strength in my voice, I said, "It's why I keep running," and took off again.

It took a second, but the Doctor caught up to me once more, and this time, he didn't try to stop me. After about a hundred yards he shouted, "This way!" and ducked to the left. I followed. It was slow going but my heart was racing anyway.

We reached a staircase and could see the ship moving directly underneath us. I took the steps three at a time, the Doctor right behind me. There was less of a guardrail down here, and we'd gone below all the shops and streamers. Whatever this area was, it wasn't part of the celebration. The ship stopped. The platform shook beneath us. "Doctor," I began, suddenly nervous.

"Yeah," he said as another tremor made the guardrail rattle. "We might have a small problem."

"Right, okay." I was used to small problems. Heck, I was used to big problems. But it was funny how your priorities tended to fall into place when the only thing between you and a thousand foot drop into the unknown suddenly didn't seem so stable.

Alien man in pinstripes and a blue closet that travels across the universe? Sure.

Alien planet with alien people playing alien musical instruments? Cool.

Alien ship traveling underneath a city in the sky? Awesome.

The possibility of falling to your death any second? Uncomfortable, to put it mildly.

"Oh, look at that." The Doctor was leaning precariously over the guardrail, looking down at the ship we'd chased here. "It's stopped." He looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "All aboard."

"Race ya." The ship was only about ten feet down. I grabbed onto the guardrail, which whined sharply in protest, and swung myself over the edge of the platform.

I heard the Doctor shout after me, but at this point I think he was doing it more out of some obligation to object whenever I did something dangerous than any real notion that he could stop me. Like a disclaimer.

At camp, I had always been terrible on the rock wall, so basically I got a lot of practice falling and trying not to twist my ankle. Twisted ankles made it hard to play capture the flag, and I _loved_ capture the flag. I was still faster than anyone who wasn't a Hermes kid, even with a twisted ankle.

Which was good, because when I landed on the roof of the ship, I twisted my ankle, hard.

Instinctively, I reached over my shoulder for the ambrosia I always kept in my backpack. "_Di immortales!_" I swore under my breath. I'd left my backpack on the Tardis. What had I been thinking?! I hadn't been. Too many things happening at once, too many things to focus on, to remember. Perfect. Just perfect.

And because that wasn't enough, a sharp cry filled the air around me. The ship's alarm was going off. I felt the engines rumble underneath me. Gripping my ankle, I called out, "Now or never, Astro Boy! We're moving!"


	7. Orders (3)

The Doctor landed a few feet behind me with a _whumph_. That same instant, a hatch in front of me opened, and two olive-green aliens climbed through. Each carried a really big, scary, alien gun of some nature with lots of wires and tubes and a big barrel that glowed a bluish color and required all four olive-green arms to hold. When they'd both stepped onto the roof of the ship, they pointed them at us. I stood up, but didn't raise my arms, in case that wasn't the universal sign for surrender. And even if it was, I had no intention of surrendering.

"Always guns," the Doctor muttered, rolling his eyes. He reached into his pocket and dug around for a moment. "Where did I put my—?"

One of the aliens made an angry noise, and I decided that we didn't have time for whatever the Doctor was doing. It was time to go with my plan. I grabbed him. "Oi!" he protested.

"Hey! I don't know what kind of operation you think you're running here, but if you're just letting ruffians jump onto your ship when you're docked, it'd better not be anything dangerous or secret because you're in a bad spot either way," I was talking fast and thinking faster. I didn't know who these guys were, what they were doing or how much trouble we were in. But I knew they were packing and I wasn't about to be a victim.

They could have been officials, but based on the fact that they didn't look like the revelers in the city above, and based on a little feeling in my gut I'd learned to trust over the years, I was more willing to bet they were criminals.

Still, I wasn't a hundred percent sure, but I was a good talker, so I stuck with that. "You know what insurance costs are nowadays? You prepared to pay for some poor sucker's broken ankle?" I tried not to wince. I gave the Doctor's arm a demonstrative tug, and he hung his head helpfully. He was playing along. Good.

The alien on the left spoke up, though I have no idea how he was even making sounds—there was no mouth anywhere I could see. "Who do you work for? You're not from Ataro Phem."

Crap. They were at least a little smarter than I'd given them credit for. In my own defense, most of the monsters I had experiencing battling would do well to win a spelling bee against a goldfish.

The Doctor spoke up. "Right, no, if you'll just…" he was still digging in his coat pocket. I yanked his arm again and interrupted him.

"Observant, but why don't you let me worry about who I work for? I'm going to need to see the rest of your vehicle. I assume you have some sort of holding facility for stowaways?" I pushed the Doctor forward, and he cooperated, but not without shooting me a look that clearly expressed that he had no idea what I was doing. I returned a tight-lipped smile. Trust me.

The aliens, befuddled, received the Doctor and gripped his arm the same way I had. These were nothing more that cadets, underlings, as I had suspected. They were excellent at taking orders from the nearest authority figure. Well, whether the Doctor liked it or not, that was now me.


	8. Bars (4)

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at me from behind bars. I watched the aliens walk down the hallway until the door at the end hissed shut behind them. I'd insisted that they leave me alone with the prisoner so I could interrogate him.

"Right. Fancy fillin' me in on your plan, then?"

I worked my jaw. "Not getting killed?"

He rolled his eyes. "Brilliant, you are."

I shrugged. "It's working so far."

He tapped the one of the bars, and the brig resonated with the tinny ring. "Dunno if 'working' is the word I'd use." But the Doctor looked equal parts irritated and amused. He was giving me a chance to work this one out. Probably because I hadn't hesitate to take charge, and now he wanted to know if I could follow through. Well, I didn't make it through high school and two years of college as a half-blood without the ability to finish a plan. With a lopsided grin, I pulled Lykos from my hair.

"Okay, scratch what I said earlier. I don't want to know what your plan is," the Doctor said.

I couldn't help but laugh. "Just a precaution. It doesn't hurt—" I stopped. I'd been about to say "mortals." It occurred to me that I actually had no idea where aliens fell in the mortal vs. mythological taxonomy. "It only hurts monsters."

I walked to the end of the hallway, and stopped at the closed door. There was no handle or switch anywhere in sight.

"Try 'Open sesame,'" came the Doctor's suggestion from behind me. I turned around so he could see me roll my eyes.

I could have filched the Doctor's magic wand—sorry, 'sonic screwdriver'—but I didn't need it. This was a spaceship. A spaceship was a vehicle. I was good with vehicles.

_Open,_ I told it.

Nothing. _Seriously? _I asked the door, as if I thought it would answer me. I realized the last spaceship I'd been talking to would have. But this one wasn't sentient.

_Open sesame._

The door gave a hiss and revealed the corridor beyond. _You've got to be kidding me,_ I thought. I stepped through and heard it hiss shut. Holding my sword out in front of me, I closed my eyes. Control room to the left. Left it was. I needed to find whoever was in charge and convince them to let the Doctor and me go. All of a sudden I heard voices. Voices and footsteps. Quick on my feet despite my ankle, I ducked into a closet. I mean, it looked like a closet. This door had a knob, at least. Here I was, halfway across the universe, same old routine: Hiding, running, fighting, saving my friends. Some things never changed, I supposed.

I couldn't decide whether that was upsetting or reassuring. Perhaps it was a little of both.

This closet didn't have a convenient window for me to look through, but withy my ear pressed to the door, I could make out the conversation.

"…begin cutting. We'll have to make a quick exit, so make sure the engines are primed." The words caught my attention. Nobody who's doing something they're allowed to be doing worries about making a quick exit. I knew that better than most, having made a number of speedy getaways myself. It was something of an art, really.

The aliens passed through another set of doors, and I stepped out of the closet. I turned in the direction they'd come, and limped toward a set of doors labeled Control Room. I kid you not; the doors were actually labeled. I should have been used to moronic monsters by now, but I had apparently given the aliens too much credit. They were no smarter than the baddies back home.

I opened the door and stepped through with the swagger of a woman in charge. Alarms sounded. Three alien goons appeared out of nowhere and grabbed me. The speaker screeched, "Security breech. Unauthorized entity in Control Room."

I grinned sheepishly at my captors. "It was unlocked?"


	9. Pigeons (5)

I didn't have a good way to be sure, but the aliens looked pretty upset. I realized that trying to cling to my authority-figure act was probably a lost cause at this point, but in a last-ditch effort I commanded them, "Tell me your whole plan!"

A Cyclops had fallen for that, once. The rest of the day had gone pretty well from that point, all things considered. One of the aliens grunted. The rest did not look amused. That wasn't to say that they couldn't have been amused; I still had no idea. But, _man_, they were ugly.

I still held Lykos in my left hand. Obviously, the goons didn't recognize it as a weapon, or they would have taken it. Now they would pay for their mistake. I tossed it, and ripped my right arm free just in time for a clean catch. I'd sustained many a self-inflicted head injury practicing that move.

I swung. Lykos slipped cleanly through the alien to my right. Like he wasn't even there. Unhurt, he stared at the strange object in my hand, obviously still puzzled as to its purpose. _Di immortales_. Now what?

I looked around, wildly. I could probably outrun them, but I was surrounded. And my ankle complained every time I moved it. I needed a weapon. I slipped Lykos back into my hair, freeing up both hands. I wasn't any good at fighting with them, but I was still a fantastic thief.

The alien on my right was still staring at me. It occurred to me that he'd seen me swipe clean through him with some unknown object, then collapse said object and slide it into my hair. I'd have paid a lot of money to know what was going through his head at that moment.

Looking bewildered, he raised his weapon. When he pulled the trigger, I dropped to the floor. If I had been any slower, I'd have lost my head, but the fireball soared over me and caught one of the other creatures square in the chest, throwing him across the room. So that's what it did. Cool. I seriously needed to get my hands on one of those.

I moved. Fast. In a second, the gun was in my arms and the alien was staring at his empty hands, stunned. But the thing was so heavy, I could barely lift it, much less fire it, so I planted my good foot and swung the thing with all my strength. Not at the alien, at the wall. I didn't know what was running through the exposed piping, but when the gun impacted, a joint sprang free and it began to hiss, spraying into the room.

In the chaos, I grabbed a long spear from the waistband of the nearest goon. He turned and raised all four arms angrily. I didn't hesitate. I'd had plenty of training with javelins at camp, and this thing was only a little different. I thrust it forward, and Greenie howled, bleeding. He stumbled backward, clutching at his chest. I held tight to the spear. The alien crumpled to the floor. The other aliens ran for the door.

I stood. Paralyzed. Staring at the dead alien at my feet. I wasn't sure why, but I had expected him to evaporate into dust. I wasn't prepared to have to stare at his body. Lying there. Like… like so many of the campers who died in the war all those years ago. The Titans had killed them, and their lifeless bodies had littered the streets of Manhattan while everyone just slept, completely unaware that children were dying outside. Those images haunted me. How could they not?

And here and now, staring at the alien on the floor, they all washed before my eyes. A tear ran down my cheek. I reached up to wipe it away, but there was blood on my hand. I let it fall.

I took a deep breath and shook my head. I wasn't about to die here today. And neither was the Doctor. This was my mess; I was going to clean it up. I stepped over the body on the floor and pushed through the doors. Maybe now that I'd shown them exactly what I was capable of, I could find out just what was going on around here.

I pushed through the control room doors, back into the corridor. No aliens in sight. My ankle whined. _Shut up_, I told it. My heart was pounding. Half-blood adrenaline is amazing stuff. Still holding my ill-begotten weapon, I strode down the hallway and took a right. More doors. I pushed through them. It looked like another command center. Four aliens turned from their consoles and froze at the sight of an angry demigod splattered with blood and holding a spear.

I pointed it forward. "Okay. Which one of you wants to tell me exactly what is going on here?" I was trying to hold my voice strong, but the last couple of words came out all quivery anyway.

The alien all the way to the left was the first to snap out of it. "We're… businessmen." The other aliens looked at him, hard. Like a warning. I think. "The forest here is the rarest in the galaxy. That's good for us."

"You're loggers?" I asked in disbelief, but all I got back were blank, uncomprehending stares. "You… cut down trees and sell the wood," I clarified.

"Ah," the alien next to him piped up. "Yes. And invisible wood is the hardest to find."

I pointed the spear at him instead, following the conversation. "It's invisible?" But as soon as the words had left my mouth, the truth dawned on me. _That's _how the city was suspended in the air. It was just a series of treehouses! And the wood was invisible. "You'll kill everyone in the city. They whole place will collapse."

The alien shrugged. "The floaties are stupid and useless and don't live for very long as it is. We're doing this planet a favor."

The knowledge that they were planning mass murder made the one dead goon in the control room a little easier to stomach. My head was spinning. I had to stop them. I threw the spear. It whizzed past the aliens' heads and buried itself in the console. It sputtered a few times but in a moment all the screens went black. They roared in outrage. "You idiot! This ship will go down with you on it."

I grinned. "We'll see." And moved back through the doors. I hobbled down the corridor as quickly as I could on my ankle. Finally, I reached the Doctor's cell. It was empty. How…?

_Hello love_.

I spun. Behind me, the Tardis faded into existence. The door opened and the Doctor extended his hand.

I crossed my arms. "How did you get out?"

He smiled. "How d'you think?"

I rolled my eyes. "The screwdriver."

"Mmm."

I stepped inside without the Doctor's help. He put his hand in his pocket. The Tardis' engines fired, and when the Doctor opened the doors again, we were back on the platforms of the city, watching the ship spiral downward. The ground was so far below that we didn't even see it crash.

The Doctor was silent for a long time. Finally, he stepped back inside the Tardis and shut the doors. "Did you give them a choice?"

"What?"

He turned around. "Before you killed them. Did you give them a choice?"

"A choice between what? Giving up nicely or staying and killing all these innocent people? No. No, I didn't give them that option." An icy shiver ran down my spine.

But the Doctor's face betrayed nothing. "What makes these people more innocent than anyone else?"

"Uhh… they weren't about to kill anyone? What are you getting at? Should I have let us both die?"

He took a deep breath, but I saw the fire in his eyes. "Listen, maybe you come from a world where everything is cut and dry. Maybe you're used to being able to tell the difference between right and wrong just from a glance. But out here," he pointed at the Tardis doors, "we don't have that luxury."

I took a deep breath, too. "Doctor. I come from a world where I can't afford to gamble with the lives of my friends. _That's_ a luxury I don't have."

He sighed, and his shoulders sagged. "You saved my life. But you took a lot of others. You can't just… If you start shrugging it off, you lose."

"Like the pigeons."

His face contorted. "What?"

"We read about it in school. This guy… he wrote about how humans killed all these pigeons, but they felt bad about it. So that made it less bad, I guess."

I saw understanding cross the Doctor's face. "Aldo Leopold. Always a philosopher."

"You've met him."

"Don't change the subject." But his expression had softened.

"I didn't save your life," I realized. "You could have screwdrivered your way out of that cell at any time. Why didn't you?"

"I wanted to see what you would do."

"You were testing me?"

"You failed."

I looked at my feet. "I'm not going to apologize for doing what I had to do."

"Nor should you. Just…" The Doctor sighed. "I've done things I regret, Odessa. I don't want you to make the same mistakes. But I can hardly condemn you. I might have done the same thing, to save a friend."

"Even if that friend didn't need saving." It wasn't a question, really.

"Yes."

"Guess that makes us even."

"No."

"No?" I looked up.

"No. It's still your turn to ask a question."


	10. Names

I nibbled ambrosia and nursed my ankle while the Doctor watched from the other side of the console. "Wanna use a question?" I asked him. "It's my turn, but you can owe me one."

He seemed to realize what he was doing. "What? No, no. I'm just. I'm fine, just fine. Working." He nodded, more to himself than to me, I think. He busied himself among the controls.

_You're taking some getting used to._

Is that what it is? I asked. I'm starting to wonder what sort of people he's traveled with before me.

_You should ask him. _The Tardis hummed, and I wondered whether she was musing over her previous passengers or responding to the Doctor, piloting somewhat haphazardly across the control room.

I cleared my throat and the Doctor looked up. "How's the ankle?" he asked.

"Brilliant," I said, imitating him.

"Oi!" he retorted. A flicker of sadness crossed his eyes. He blinked it away. "Watch it."

I stuck out my tongue.

He stuck out his tongue.

"I thought of a question," I announced.

"Bril—" He stopped himself. I grinned. "Let's have it, then."

"Who have you traveled with before? What have they been like?"

I sort of expected him so slip into solemn reverie, the way I did when I thought of people I'd known. Demigods at camp who'd embarked on dangerous quests. Demigods who had never returned home.

But his face lit up. "They're the most incredible people you'd ever meet, Odessa."

"Humans?" I asked. It was a fair question.

He nodded, and then added with a wink, "Mostly."

"What were their names?"

His smile became a little straighter, his eyes a little sadder. "The most recent was Donna. Donna Noble. Best temp in Chisick."

I didn't ask what had happened between them. I just sat, nearly motionless (which was totally killing me), and waiting for him to continue.

"There was Martha. She was a doctor." He chuckled to himself.

I waited. But his face had gone almost completely pale. I wondered if I should say something, like, Hey, if this is too hard, you can stop, it's okay. But the truth was I wanted to know. So I kept silent.

"And there was R—" He choked on her name. A moment passed, and I knew he was seeing her face, in his mind. "Rose." And a tear slid down his cheek.

I abandoned discretion. "Did she die?"

He raised his eyebrows and inhaled deeply. "No. No she did not." He looked at me and forced a smile, wiping away the rogue tear with his palm. "She's just fine."

"So is that all?" I asked. It seemed unlikely, what with his being nine hundred and change.

"Well I should think not!" he proclaimed. The pep returned to his step and he danced across the control room to the other side of the console, flipping a lever dramatically. "There's Sarah-Jane Smith. You two would get along," he raised an eyebrow at me. "Nyssa. An aristocrat from the planet Traken." He threw another lever. "Romana." He cranked a wheel. "Ace." He whacked a button. "Leela." Another wheel went spinning. "Susan." He paused.

"All girls?"

"What's that?"

"Have they all been girls?"

"No! No..."

I laughed at him. "You can relax, Invader Zim. I'm just asking."

"Well I think you've used your question!" He declared.

"I was supposed to get three," I reminded him.

"Ah. Right you are."

"Okay, that was two, here's three: Has anyone ever said no?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well I assume you don't run around time and space kidnapping people and forcing them to come with you. You give people a choice? Just like you gave me?"

His eyes twinkled. "Oh, you didn't have a choice. Not really. You're the daughter of Hermes! Travelling is in your nature. The open sky calls to you, isn't that right?"

"Nice try. Really excellent, actually, trying to get me to talk about myself. But you didn't answer the question."

He sighed, but the smile lingered on his face. Then, all at once, it was gone. "Of course people have said no. Rose." It didn't look like it hurt so much to say her name this time. "Rose said no."

"But I thought—"

"She changed her mind." He winked.

"Good choice."

"Yes, I think it was," he mused. "Is it my turn now, ma'am?" He said the word "ma'am" in an American accent. A Southern drawl, to be precise.

I couldn't help but laugh. "I do not sound like that."

"'Course you don't," he said, spinning on one foot back around to the control panel. "You're a New Yorker!" He whacked a massive button and turned back around. Eyebrow arched, eyes aflame, he said in a low voice, "So here's my question: Where to next?"


	11. Sandwiches (1)

"Einezdej!" the Doctor proclaimed, inhaling deeply as the marketplace swirled around him. "Furthest outcropping of the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire! Renowned galaxies around for one thing, just one thing. Wanna guess what it is?"

I looked around as we weaved through the busy street. People were bartering and arguing over prices and goods. Smoke in a variety of colors wafted over the street, billowing and dissipating into the pink sky. The stalls contained mostly bright fabrics, but a few displayed gaudy sculptures and other various unidentifiable contraptions. One, occupied by nothing short of an oversized hamster, boasted the widest variety of bizarre fruit I'd ever seen in one place. And I'd been to Chinatown. So I took a guess. "Their… fruit?"

"Sandwiches!" He turned around, holding two wrapped bundles and grinning like a madman. "Isn't that brilliant? Humanity spreads out, absorbs and mixes with cultures lightyears from good old Earth, tries new food, invents…well, new ways to eat it." He paused and made a face somewhere between impressed and horrified, and I didn't even want to know what he'd meant. He shook the thought away and continued, "But the _sandwich!_ Who'd have thought? Well, besides me, eh?"

I rolled my eyes. He handed me one and suddenly my stomach growled, as if it had forgotten to be hungry until now. I examined the "sandwich." The wrapper was a bluish color, smooth and slightly warm to the touch. I reached for a corner and started to unwrap it but the Doctor stopped me.

"No, don't do that. You eat it all together. See?" He demonstrated.

I looked back down at it. Now, it was orange. I decided I was too hungry to mind, and took a big bite. And if I was going to remember just one thing about my visit to the market of Einezdej, I hoped it was that exact moment. Flavor exploded in my mouth and involuntarily I groaned. I threw my head back and rolled my eyes in delirium. "Oh my gods."

The Doctor was watching me, looking pleased with himself. "Yeah," was all he said.

I shook my head in disbelief. It had taken them a hundred thousand years, but mortals had finally created something that tasted better than Greek nectar. Although, to be fair, I didn't know what Greek nectar tasted like in this millennium.

Now that was a thought: Where were the gods, now that human culture had been flung across the cosmos? Had they spread out as well? Were there still half-bloods in the year 130,980?

I was about to take another shamelessly huge bit of my sandwich when the Doctor placed his hand on my arm and said my name really quietly.

"Uh… what do you think you're doing?" But when I turned to look at him, he wasn't looking at me. He had frozen in place, and was looking behind me, over my head.

"Don't panic," he said.

Great. I sighed. "Doctor."

"Yeah," he said, still staring behind me.

"Do you know how many times I have been told not to panic?"

"A lot?" His voice was measured and careful.

"A lot," I said. "And do you know, how many of those times, I have actually felt compelled to _not panic_?"

"How many?"

"Zero," I said.

"Ah."

Slowly, I turned around, and stood face to face with a rhinoceros in a leather suit, which was not even close to the most bizarre thing I'd ever seen. The rhino held up some device that made a noise like an AM tuner, which was weird, and shined a blue light in my face, making this the second time in a short period that I'd been shined in the face with a blue light. It was getting old really, really fast.

"Confirmed energy signature match. Apprehend subject."

Behind me, the Doctor spoke up, "Sorry, what? Who are we apprehending?"

The rhino managed to look mildly annoyed at him. "You are not apprehending anyone. We are apprehending the female. You will not interfere." Then he grabbed my arm, turned me around and snapped a pair of surprisingly comfortable handcuffs onto my wrists.

Three more rhinos appeared out of the crowd. Two of them grabbed the Doctor. "Oi!" he protested.

I'd been arrested before. I wasn't panicking yet. "Aren't you going to read me my rights?" I asked, only half joking.

The rhino grunted. "No."

I looked at the Doctor. Even in the current situation, he managed to look amused. I, too, stifled a laugh. But my knees had started to go a little weak.

While the other two rhino-thugs held the Doctor in place, I was led away, around a corner, and into the back of a vehicle that didn't have any wheels or thrusters that I could see. And even as they shoved me inside, I took a moment to marvel at its design. It really was a beautiful craft.

Then the doors hissed shut and the world went dark.


	12. Docks (2)

The woman reached out to me, but I did not return the gesture, I stood still, merely an observer. The little girl, who had been dancing around her mother's feet, stopped and tugged at her garment, asking for her attention. "Mama, what are you looking at?"

The woman touched her daughter's head affectionately but did not look down. Instead she held my gaze. "I wasn't fast enough. Almost," she said. "But not quite. But it's all right. Things turned out okay. I don't want you to blame yourself."

She was speaking to me, I could tell. Because I was dreaming, and half-blood dreams come with a kind of clarity. And I knew. Without even looking around I knew where I was. It didn't exactly feel like home. It was more like a grandparent's house. You know it's not where you live, but you still feel comfortable, at ease.

The little girl tugged at her mother's skirt once more. "Mama, watch me!" She let go and somersaulted, throwing her own skirt completely over her head. She stood and righted herself but seemed otherwise unperturbed.

The woman smiled softly. "I wasn't fast enough. But it wasn't…" She faded away.

Wasn't what? I tried to call after her, but I could not speak.

* * *

All of a sudden I was jostled awake. Darkness engulfed me and I panicked, completely disoriented. When I tried to reach out for some clue as to where I was, the handcuffs that restricted my movement did the job for me. I was in a futuristic paddy wagon being hauled off who-knows-where for I crime I hadn't even gotten to commit. The right side of my head throbbed. I must have hit it and been knocked unconscious. And I couldn't even reach up to feel whether I had a goose egg. I exhaled roughly. So everything pretty much sucked. Awesome.

The vehicle stopped roughly. How bad a driver did you have to be to get a bumpy ride out of a hovercraft? In fairness, I thought, it was probably difficult to drive with a giant horn in the middle of your field of vision. The doors opened and I squinted against the light, but my muttered protests were ignored. I was led off of the craft though some kind of docking bay. The windows slanted outward, and I made the mistake of looking over the edge. We were hundreds of feet in the air. Again.

I almost rolled my eyes, but realized there wasn't any point. What was I going to do? Complain that I'd already done the perilous heights bit? I might as well have added that I'd already eaten pizza this week, so if that was what they were serving captives then I'd pass. The truth was there was a good thick layer of technologically advanced glass between me and the hundred meter downward dash, so I figured I was pretty safe. And I would never refuse pizza.

When I looked out at the scene sprawled before me, my breath caught. The marketplace, huge as it was, was only a small part of Einezdej. Several thin towers that I presumed looked similar to this one stood at regular intervals, with docks positioned at every other story. But more incredible were the thousands of ships that sailed between them. The large, flat apparatuses were clearly sails but the ships they were attached to did not look like they were ever meant to touch the water.

While behind me, my captors carried on some bizarre conversation that sounded like a failed attempt at a Dr. Seuss book, I watched in awe as one of the ships folded down its sails and docked smoothly at one of the platforms. A crew of humans (or what I assumed were humans), aliens, and robots appeared and busied themselves checking over the ship while the dockworkers began to unload the craft.

Of course! I thought. They were cargo ships. This whole place was a giant port. For a moment I envied the sailors. Who new what sights they had seen, all the places they traded with? Cities more incredible and bizarre than this one, I was sure. Did they have history textbooks—or, text-holograms or whatever—that talked about twenty-first-century New York City? All at once I felt just how far from home I truly was. But it didn't make me homesick. It never did. It only made my heart beat faster and my skin tingle with excitement.

My captor jiggled my arm to get my attention. We had stopped before a large set of doors. "You will identify the specimen." My escort informed me.

But before I could say, "Look buddy, you've got the wrong gal," the doors opened to reveal the room beyond and I knew with a dreadful certainty that, somehow, they'd gotten exactly the right gal. The celestial bronze glowed softly, suspended in midair by one means or another. The wings were so perfectly shaped they looked like they might fly away at any moment, the snakes perfectly identical and detailed. It was the caduceus. The staff of my father.

The last time I'd seen it, more than a hundred thousand years ago, it had looked like a cell phone, but here it was in all its glory. I guess that answered my question about where the gods were. I knew my father at the very least had been near here. But how had he let his precious staff fall into the hands of these thugs?

I'm sure my face revealed that I recognized the object. I _wasn't_ sure the rhinos were good enough at deciphering human expressions to pick up on that. So I lied. "I've never seen it before."


	13. Snakes (3)

The holding room was small and simple. I don't know what I expected, to be honest. A chair sat in the corner, unassuming. I stared it down but I did not sit. I was too agitated to sit. It wasn't the cell. Gods knew, I was used to that. But the _caduceus!_ What in Zeus' name was it doing here? And what was wrong with it? Why wasn't it camouflaged? The Mist should have prevented anyone from seeing it clearly. Or maybe the rhino-heads were able to see through it. Still, even I had to really focus to see past the Mist and I could see the staff clear as day. I rubbed my head.

Two sets of footsteps—too light to belong to the rhino-heads—came to a stop outside my door. My door. I'd adopted the little room as my own already. How quaint of me. I pressed my ear near the seal.

"Were there any other energy matches?" came a gruff whisper.

"Ha, yeah. The Face of Boe registered positive, but he's on the other side of the star system and we can't very well just bring him in here now can we?" The voice sounded female, but the accent was weird.

The first guy grunted. "That doesn't even make sense. It was probably a false positive. The big ugly creature gives off all kinds of weird readings. Get the girl to cooperate."

The door opened and I stumbled backward, trying to look like I hadn't just been eavesdropping. The thing that entered was humanoid. A bit too tall, and I couldn't make out any particular ethnic persuasion, but two eyes, two ears, one nose, and no giant horn. And for some reason this person made me far more uneasy than the rhinos had.

"Please, sit." She gestured toward the chair. She'd been the one with the weird accent on the other side of the door. It wasn't American, and it didn't sound English like the Doctor; I didn't know what it was.

"I'd rather not, thanks." I gave the chair a wary glance.

Weird Accent shrugged and pulled the chair over. "Very well. I hope you don't mind…" She sat in the chair herself.

I started pacing.

"Your energy signature matches the readings we've been getting from the Nadroedd."

I stopped. "Um, the what?"

"Nadroedd," she repeated. "We don't know its rightful name, obviously. The word means 'snakes' in Old Earth Welsh." She smiled a little. "I came up with it. What do you think?"

If I told her how ridiculous it was, she would probably catch on that I had some connection to the object. So I forced myself to grin right back. "Cool."

She looked puzzled.

"Cool," I said again. "Good. Yes. Woo!" I'd never had to explain the word "cool" before.

Her expression softened, so I guess it was good enough. Then she gave a heavy sigh. "It's a shame, you know, to see such a beautiful specimen go to waste, but as long as we can't figure out what it is or what its purpose was, we can't allow it to exist. It's quite possibly a threat to the empire, you understand."

I hesitated. She noticed. I cleared my throat. "It's just… it's beautiful. It seems like we—you, I mean—could learn a lot more about it. I don't know that destroying it is the…."

Weird Accent watched in amusement.

"…only solution," I finished, deflated. As long as I was claiming no connection to the object, who was I to tell them they couldn't just nuke the thing? And I surely wasn't about to tell this woman the truth. I didn't trust her, and if she knew how powerful the caduceus really was, there was no way she'd let it go.

She stood decisively. "Well, I'll tell you what: I'll give you, oh… three hours to rack your memory_ really hard_ and see if you can think of anything you know about the Nadroedd. Then we're tossing it in the disintegrator." And without even giving me the chance to make a counter-offer, she flitted through the door.

I made to follow her, but the door closed in my face. I groaned out loud. The truth was, given my limited experience with disintegrators, I had no idea if such a thing would even _scratch_ the caduceus. But what sort of daughter would I be if I let these thoughtless goons find out? And gods forbid they _activate_ it somehow. Then things could get a whole lot messier.

Behind me, the monitor blinked to life. "Odessa?"

I spun around. "Doctor!"

He squinted at the screen. "Am I coming through okay?" He asked.

"Just fine," I answered. "Wait, can you see me? I don't see a camera…" I looked around.

"Oh, this isn't the twenty-first century anymore, Toto." He winked. "All the visual comm-displays are two-way nowadays. Technology marches onward."

I noticed his surroundings. "Are you in the Tardis? Did you go back to the Tardis without me?" I accused.

"Oi, let's calm down, eh? I had to figure out where you were. Turns out you _do_ have a rather unique energy signature that's reasonably easy to trace if you know what to look for. Well, I say easy…" He tugged on his ear, lost in thought for a moment. "Thing is, the Judoon said you _matched_ something and I can't for the life of me figure out what that would be. I'm running some theories through the Tardis mainframe now, but I'm sort of at a loss."

"Actually, Doctor, I'm pretty sure I know why I matched…"

"Oh? Been doing a little investigating? What have you found out, then?"

"They've got my dad's staff. The caduceus."

"Caduceus." The Doctor pondered this for a moment. "What, the medical symbol?"

I shook my head. "You're thinking of the rod of Asclepius. One snake. The caduceus has two snakes. And wings."

"That's who you thought I was, when we met."

"Who?"

"I introduced myself as the Doctor, and you thought I was this Asclepius person."

"Oh." I remembered. "Well, reasonable guess."

"Sure," he conceded.

"Anyway, they're going to destroy it, and we can't let them do that. But we can't let them keep it, either. It's too powerful to risk it falling into the wrong hands."

"What's it do?"

"What doesn't it do?" I countered. "Think: your screwdriver, times a hundred, at least."

"Rude," he huffed.

"Oh, come on!" I rolled my eyes. "Be serious. Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, 'This could be a little more sonic'?"

"Oi, you sound like an old friend."

"Your old friend was right."

He waved his hand dismissively. "So have you got a plan, then?"

I crossed my arms. "Of course I do."

"Better than your last plan?"

"Watertight," I said with a smirk. "We're going to steal it."


	14. Cards (4)

**Author's note: **Whew! Finally posting this chapter. I was experimenting here a little bit; hopefully it reads okay. Thank you SO MUCH for all of your continued support. I get butterflies every time I see a review/favorite/follow hit my inbox. I honestly never expected to get such a response without actually using any characters from PJatO canon. Odessa appreciates it!

* * *

I pressed my ear to the door, waiting for the high-pitched whir. The plan was elegant, really.

"_You said you were tracking me. Can you get to my cell and use your glowstick to bust me out of here?"_

_"You know, I get bored of just using the sonic screwdriver to solve every problem. Where's the fun in that?"_

_Was he serious? "It's not solving the problem. It's only part of the plan."_

I could hear a pair of feet approaching, but I couldn't tell whether they were the Converse-clad ones I was waiting for.

_"Well, let's see," he rubbed his chin. "Deadlock seals shouldn't be a problem. They haven't been around for a few hundred years now and this civilization won't invent them again for another hundred thousand. So I should be able to sonic your door open." He mused for a moment. "It's not made of wood, is it?"_

_"Is that important?" No way was going with this plan if the material of the door was a hang up._

_"Everything's important," he countered._

_I decided to pick my battles. "No, the door's not wood."_

The footsteps stopped, squeaking lightly on the floor.

"No access." I recognized the gruff voice of the Judoon.

"Health and Safety," came the singsong reply. "You're needed on level thirty. Better hurry, sounded urgent." I could hear the smirk in his words. He'd made it.

As the Judoon's heavy footsteps receded into the distance, I heard the high-pitched whine of the sonic. Usually it annoyed me, but now I couldn't imagine a sound I'd rather hear.

_"Funny thing is, the people on Einezdej haven't played card games for millennia. Oh, people will always find ways to gamble their money away, but the concept of a jack or say… an ace doesn't make any sense to them."_

After a moment the lock sprang free. The door hissed open, revealing the Doctor, grinning like a crazy person. And maybe I was crazy too, because I couldn't help but grin back.

"Off we go then!" he declared. And off we went.

_"I'm excellent at poker," I added helpfully, no idea where this was going._

_He nodded absently. "I'm sure you are. I had a companion named 'Ace' once. Did I ever tell you about her? Brilliant, Ace. Very fast."_

_Now I was lost. Why had he changed the subject? He'd already told me about Ace. She was human. How fast could she have been? Not as fast as me, surely. Maybe 'ace' was some kind of code word, but what for?_

I hadn't realized what a labyrinth the tower was when I'd been escorted to the room the first time. We'd taken two rights, a left, and a flight of stairs when the Doctor turned to me and panted, "Are you sure you remember where this thing was?"

I stared at him, slack jawed. "I was following you!"

He was dumbfounded. "What'd you do that for?!"

I opened my mouth to reply but discovered I was speechless. I sighed heavily and took off back down the stairs. One right, one left, and another right. I skidded to a halt in front of the large window I'd passed by merely hours earlier, and caught the Doctor's arm as he raced by. "Wait, look."

I expected him to chastise me for the delay, but he stopped. For a second, we both stared out at the busy port, watching the ships pulling into dock, as others departed for foreign worlds. "Sun sails," the Doctor explained. "Light bouncing off them propels the ships forward. Very efficient. Beautiful." The awe in his voice echoed my own.

I drew in a heavy breath and looked at him. He raised an eyebrow at me. I took off.

The caduceus turned slowly in suspension. The Doctor turned to me expectantly. This part of the plan had seemed a lot more solid when I had laid it all out in my head. The truth was it was a total guess. A gamble.

I looked meaningfully at the staff and extended my right hand toward it. I thought I saw it falter in its rotation, and hoped it wasn't simply wishful thinking. Then it stopped turning altogether. I was so relieved to have elicited any response at all that I almost lost my concentration. After what seemed like an eternity, it began a slow journey toward the window. It sped up as it approached and crashed through the glass barrier, smacking into my hand with such force that it knocked me to the ground, falling beside me with a noisy _clang!_

Ha, I thought smugly. Ancient Greece: 1; Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire: zip.

The Doctor helped me up, but was careful not to touch the caduceus. He was visibly freaked out by it. Maybe he'd accepted the fact that I existed, but he was having trouble with the rest of it.

I realized an alarm had begun to sound, filling the corridor with an angry siren. As if on cue, the Doctor regained his wits. "Busted," he said.

In an instant we were surrounded. It wasn't just Judoon this time, but several varieties of humanoid. The Doctor raised one arm, and fished the psychic paper out with another. I started doing what I did best: lying… at about ninety miles an hour.

"Hello! Sorry for any trouble. If you'll pardon us, we've just got to get this to the lab on level … seven." Maybe they wouldn't know if there was a lab forty-three floors down. "It's highly dangerous, carrying multiple pathogens."

One of the humanoids was studying the Doctor's psychic paper. "This says you're museum officials," he said with a suspicious look in my direction.

I glared at the Doctor. Museum officials? Really?

He shrugged helplessly.

"Yes!" I began. "Yes we are. We are actually—"

"—coming _from_ the museum now," the Doctor chimed in. "Headed _to_ the lab. If you'll just let us pass through…"

"Stop."

I knew that accent. The sea of security people parted. It was the same woman who'd paid me a visit in the holding cell. "I knew you would change your mind," she nodded to me knowingly.

I gritted my teeth.

_I racked my brain. A child of Athena would have made quick work of this cipher. But I was terrible at codes and patterns, partly because dyslexia makes cryptograms and word scrambles impossible. I wasn't stupid, but I was never the traditionally brainy kid; at this point I wasn't even sure this was my plan anymore. I was just good at running._

"I heard your clever little escape plan. Grab the staff, get it out of the building and turn us in to the Overseer for our little operation. So well-thought out. Very well executed. All-around excellent, really." She gave a few patronizing claps. "And you Doctor. I've heard so much about you, and I must say, it is an honor."

She took a step forward. The Doctor took a step back.

_The answer dawned on me so fast I almost snapped my fingers. Running. That was it. I decided to confirm my hypothesis, and find out the reason he was speaking in riddles. "Doctor? How do we know we're not being listened to right now?"_

_The Doctor winked. "We don't."_

"Now, of course I heard your little plan. And of course you know that. So don't think for a second that I'm going to believe your little scheme to 'maneuver the object carefully and slowly down to one of the docks. Clearly you intend to make a run for it." She was looking at me intently now. No, not at me, but at the caduceus in my hand.

My knuckles whitened as my grip increased in response.

"So I'll make this easier for all of us. I've sealed off every docking bay for five floors above and below us. You've got nowhere to go, Doctor."

"Oh, you're right about that." He grinned. "You've got me all figured out. But I was never the one you should have been worried about."

_That was why he'd said Ace was fast. He wasn't talking about her. He was talking about me. I was the secret weapon. _

_I was the ace._

By the time the woman looked back to where I was standing, I wasn't standing there anymore. And by the time she'd ordered her goons to go after me, I was waving at the security team five levels down as I passed the last secured bay. They didn't see me, of course, but I amused myself. Two more levels down, a ship was pulling into the docking bay. I could have snuck on board easily enough, but something made me stop before the ship's captain.

I extended my hand. "Odessa. Daughter of Hermes."

The captain, to whom I had simply appeared in a blur of movement, looked a little taken aback.

"I seek passage aboard your vessel." Why was I talking like that? "If you'd be so kind. I need to go to the Overseer. I can guarantee safe passage."

The captain shook my hand. "Captain Crow. Welcome aboard the HMS Mercury."


End file.
